Daily News on Geof Stone's Work on NSA Reform Panel

Geoffrey Stone was talking to two students in his University of Chicago office when the phone rang and displayed an odd caller I.D: “19 Anonymous.”

The prominent constitutional law professor said, “That’s weird, never seen anything like that.” He laughed and joked that it must be the National Security Agency.

It was.

It’s why the law school’s former dean found himself in a packed NSA auditorium at Fort Meade, Md. last week, a skunk at the spy agency’s party.

The invitation to Stone, a staunch civil libertarian and member of an ACLU national advisory panel, was not tendered because he’s some easily belittled or converted critic.

He was there because he’s a man of intellectual heft and candor who served on a five-member presidential review group asked to assess NSA surveillance and related issues after the startling disclosures by Edward Snowden.